Rachel Kushner is the best-selling author of The Flamethrowers, a finalist for the National Book Award and a New York Times Top Ten Book of 2013; Telex from Cuba (2008), a finalist for the National Book Award; and The Mars Room (2018), which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Soon after graduating from college, Piper Kerman got mixed up in a drug trafficking and money laundering operation. In 1998, she was brought up on charges related to her involvement in the drug operation. Kerman was later sentenced to 15 months in prison. Her experiences behind bars inspired the 2010 best-selling memoir Orange Is the New Black, which was later turned into an Emmy Award-winning Netflix series of the same name.